Leadership and Management in Engineering

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator results from 740 professional employees of consulting engineering firms show that a greater percentage of consulting engineers have a Type preference for Introversion over Extraversion, Intuition over Sensing, Thinking over Feeling, and Judging over Perceiving than the national U.S. population. Substantially more consulting engineers have a Intuition-Thinking temperament than the national U.S. population. The differences in Type and temperament between consulting engineers, their clients, and the public can create communication challenges. The full range of Type and temperament preferences are of value in the diverse mix of work and related interactions with clients and the public inherent in the consulting engineering field. However 96 percent of individuals with Extraversion and Feeling preferences who enroll in engineering transfer to other fields in the first two years of college. Adjusting the first-year curricula so that individuals can see the value of their Feeling and Extraversion preferences in the world of consulting could lead to a more balanced mix of Types and temperaments within the pool of graduate engineers that can be drawn upon by consulting engineering firms.

Intuition has been recognized as an established factor in human psychology and thinking. In this paper we present the results of our study of the prevalence and exercise of intuition in a public construction organization. We found that a majority of engineers believe in the use of intuition, trust it, and use it in their practice. We hypothesized that the use of intuition and concern for people might be correlated. However, no such relationship was discovered. Nevertheless, we found that project engineers and senior resident engineers/area engineers had the same general perception of intuition and also used intuition in their decision-making processes. The engineers we surveyed have a high interest in the welfare of colleagues, but work primarily for their own personal gains. They have a high concern for the safety and health of the public and feel affronted by corruption. They also claim a high level of loyalty to their organization. The scores of the engineers we surveyed generally fall into a zone representing practicality and reasonability, and thereby indicate sound psychological health for organizational management. It is recommended that engineering and management organizations place greater emphasis during training on the use of intuition in decision making and organizational design.

Water utility reforms aimed at enhancing operational performance of utilities are vigorously being pursued in African water utilities. In this paper, I use case examples in East African cities of Kampala, Nairobi, and Dar es Salaam to highlight the role of creativity in supporting reforms. We find that utility managers need to be creative, ambitious, and daring in implementing reforms. Specifically I note that incentives should be adequately targeted, addressing a certain focus performance area. I also find that creativity requires proactive benchmarking to cross-fertilize managerial thought with best practices and building desire for peer excellence. The discussions also suggest that effective water operations management requires inculcating meaningful rivalry among operating teams. Further, there is need for organic structure to cope with the uncertain nature of water distribution operations in African water utilities. Likewise, operational plans in such environments should target achievement of outputs and performance trends through flexible implementation of practical strategies.